Thursday, April 29, 2010

Tanked ICC

Did not have quite the same reaction to tanking as I did to healing in a raid. We restarted our ICC lock this week (after continuing last week only to meet with nothing but wipes on Dreamwalker) and I took Emila. We got up to Sauerfang (a couple of wipes, which is rockier than we've been when everyone's on their mains, but overall not too bad) and one of our DPS had DCed during Lady Deathwhisper (ended up 9-manning her) and never got back on. We had one somewhat decent attempt at Sauerfang but it was pretty much doomed from the beginning. I managed to get a new mace and new shield, which (among emblems) was all I really wanted besides a taste of tanking in an actual raid. Soooo much different than tanking 5-mans.

The first time I healed in a raid (Naxx), I was hooked. That was it. I loved it and still do. Tanking...not the same. I still like tanking, but not as much as healing. For the most part, my 80's are all geared enough that they can do what they need in ICC (and as of yesterday, now they've all been through the first couple of bosses). Emila's gear still needs some work, and Lade's not that much ahead. It's not surprising that Kady's the one who's got the best gear. Garaba's always been ahead of me in the gearscore area, but it wasn't until I starting noticing the gear of people in the dungeon finder groups that I realized: I'm pretty dang geared compared to the average player. From listening to the WoW.com podcast as well as reading and seeing what people discuss in trade chat, a lot of raiding guilds raid more than once a week. Duh. I knew that. Some guilds still use DKP (something that had to be explained to my newb-self a while back). The hardcore raiding guilds--and by "hardcore" I mean "raids-more-than-us"--are only better than us because they've had more practice. We have a slower learning curve, which can frustrate pugs, but it works for us. I've thought of us as "behind" for a long time and yeah we're behind when compared to the hardcore raiding guilds. But some guilds don't raid even as much as we do. I don't know where we fall under "average" or "above average" as far as raiding guilds go, but I think we're doing pretty dang well, even if the Dreamwalker fight kicks our butt.

Monday, April 26, 2010

BRD Screenshot

We 5-manned Molten Core the other day and on our way there through BRD, we had the succubus open the door for us and I caught this little scene.
Not gonna lie, it made me giggle. A lot. And take a screen shot of it to enjoy whenever ;)

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Lunch?

Dear Alliance,

I hate you for getting Wintergrasp at lunchtime. F*** all of you.

Love,
Kady


So Super and I were supposed to be on our way to lunch but we're still at home. Why? Because while I was in the shower, he got in a VOA-25. He thought I was going to take longer. I was starving before I got in the shower, now my health bar IRL is down to like 20hp >.<

Originally he told me he was only going to do "the one boss" but I didn't believe it. I was right. I'm still sitting here, waiting to leave for lunch. Half tempted to tell him to meet me there, but if I want cocktails (and I just might...), he needs to drive and I don't feel like taking a trip back to the restaurant tomorrow to pick my car up...


*Our internet just went down, serves him right, maybe I can get food now...

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

My only day off this week and it's maintenance day. /sigh

My next day off isn't until Saturday. Not that I was planning on playing all day today (I'm seeing "The Runaways" with my friend later), but I was hoping to get some dailies in and maybe level an alt. But sadly that is not the case. I read an article forever ago about "how to survive maintenance day" and one of the suggestions was "start a blog" lol. So I'll be posting a quick update on what I've been doing in the game lately and then I'll be off to marathon The X-Files (I love Netflix) and recapture some childhood memories ;)


Ladelyia - I've mostly just been doing some daily dungeons with her and leveling her Engineering. I've finally hit 450 and then last Sunday, Super's alt (Squeezetoy) and Lade both managed to craft Jeeves. We had both been getting up the mats together over the weekend, and the worst part about the whole thing was getting the Khorium needed for the Khorium Power Cores--none on the AH. :( Squeeze spent time in Nagrand attempting to mine it while I was at work, and by the time I got home, between what he had and what got put on the AH, we had enough to craft the little butler. :) Lade is also slowly collecting the mats for the chopper. She's got most of the inexpensive ones (and 8 out of 12 Titansteel Bars) and she also bought the exhaust pipe. Slowly but surely she's on her way to that motorcycle! I had toyed with the idea of giving the bike to Kady, since she was my main anyway, but the whole reason for leveling Lade's engineering was for the mounts (in addition to leveling tailoring) so that idea went out the window. I did however break down and buy the Sparkle Pony (Celestial Steed) so at least now all my toons who can ride have a pretty mount. It is BOA and applies to all future toons you make, much like the Onyxian Whelpling and Mr. Chilly and that was a big selling point with me.


Kady - I've been raiding with Kady and last week she got some offspec gear (again, got laughed at for what I considered "offspec" but w/e). Garaba out-rolled me on pants and, granted, we had the same pants on so technically it was the same upgrade for both of us, but he's got better gear than me all around anyway. So I was a little grouchy on that roll. Thankfully, after that run I had enough frosties to buy the tier pants, though I would have preferred to use them to buy the head instead if I had won the pants. Aaaaannnyyyyyyyway... I've looked up upgrades for my remaining 232 gear (only two things!). One upgrade is crafted (Sandals of Consecration) and the other can be bought with frost emblems (Purified Lunar Dust). While I should probably be saving to get the tier helm for the 4-piece bonus, 60 emblems is much easier to get, and I think I'll be using Lade's frost emblems to get me some Primordial Saronite for the crafted shoes. My gearscore overall will benefit more from upgrading the two 232s rather than upgrading the 245 that is my current helm (Helm of Clouded Sight). My new pants do not have spellthread in them yet and my shoulders are missing an enchant (just keep forgetting to go buy it), so those will help as well.


Emila - I tanked some Ulduar bosses with her on Friday! Calinette whispered me and asked if I had any toons that wanted some Ulduar achievements (BK does Ulduar achievement runs apparently) and I told him all my toons were not locked and he could have whichever one he wanted. He wanted a tank and so Emila got to set foot in Ulduar (not for the first time, FL was the weekly raid boss and I managed to get her in a pug for that one) and actually tank her first raid. We did FL, Razorscale, XT, Ignis, and Auriaya. I had a blast tanking. I was the off-tank in some fights and the main tank in others, depending on what achievement we were trying for and what I would have to do. The other tank's gearscore was much higher, so if it involved taking more damage, he did it. Emila's gear is getting pretty good now. She could tank ToC10 with no problem and probably handle the first couple of bosses in ICC (not Festergut though, not yet). Her trinkets are crap because good ones are so hard to find (been saving up her frosties for that), but a lot of her gear is 232. I can't seem to get any of the heroic bosses to drop the gear that I desperately need for upgrade. I'm still carrying around my Hammer of Quiet Mourning and my Titansteel Shield Wall for tanking. I've got better weapons in my DPS set! Speaking of DPS, Emila is also dual-spec'ed now, finally. Not that I'm ANY good at melee DPS, having gone from 1 to 80 as a pure tank (thanks to Squeezetoy as my healer) and really only having tank gear. I've got some pieces of DPS gear, but nothing that really helps me. I'm lucky if I'm above the healer for damage when I DPS...

That's all for now, time for some X-Files! :)

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

One more thing...

I forgot to mention that after Kady gets her Violet Protodrake (Lade only needs one achievement from Children's week and then she'll have it, Kady needs Midsummer) I'm only doing the EASY holiday achievements on my other toons IF I FEEL LIKE IT. They're like chores at this point, especially the ones that you get from random drops. The ones that require you do things and then you get them, those are ok, but the fact that some meta achievements need you to get something completely random, that's not cool.

Speaking of random: I want to quickly tell you about my favorite Easter memory from this year (IRL of course). It actually happened Good Friday rather than on Easter, but w/e. I watched a bunch of (fully grown) military men do an Easter Egg Hunt. They didn't put it on for their kids, it was put on FOR THEM. It was HILARIOUS to watch all these guys in their military uniforms running around picking up eggs going "I GOT SIX! I GOT SEVEN!". Made my entire week. So funny.

That's all.

Monday, April 5, 2010

OMG EGGS!!!!! (An Achievement Junkie's Guide to Noblegarden)


I'm currently writing this while on the flightpoint taxi, doing Desert Rose. Noblegarden is pretty simple. To become a Noble Gardener, you don't even need all of the achievements for this holiday. That's pretty nice considering one of the achievements is based on what you randomly get from the eggs (Sunday's Finest). For the most part, the achievements themselves are straight forward. The hardest one is going to vary depending on your server. My PvP server made Hard Boiled really hard last year due to the amount of horde who were corpse-camping people. This year, not so much (I went at 7:30pm).

I think my biggest challenge last year (and will probably be this year) was Shake Your Bunny-Maker. Some horde females are really hard to find. Dwarf females are also somewhat hard to find, but usually there's a way of finding them in chat and stuff. It also doesn't help that the Spring Flowers used to put bunny ears on the females have a 5 min cooldown. That's not cool, it totally doesn't help you when you're running up and down the streets of Dalaran stalking females and trying to put bunny ears on them! If you find the last two females you need, you have to wait 5 min after getting one to get the other, they could have disappeared by then.

The biggest things with Noblegarden is: DON'T ACTUALLY BUY ANYTHING WITH YOUR CHOCOLATE. Except the egg to hide in Stormwind, that's ok. And if you have all the other achievements (including Chocoholic), buying the tuxedo pants and shirt is ok for Blushing Bride. What's nice is the clothes for that aren't soulbound, so you can trade with someone and you can both get the achievement. BUT DON'T BUY ANYTHING ELSE. Everything you need for the achievements comes in the eggs and will drop randomly. Including the rabbit pet. Eat your candy. Typically the stuff you need will drop by the time you've gathered up 105 chocolates anyway (remember, 5 to buy the egg to put in SW).

And that's my cheap guide to Noblegarden. In the time it took to write this post, I finished the achievement (I had already started, but w/e). ;)

Happy Egg Hunting!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Soooooo healing...that's still what I do, right?

It's been a while since I've posted anything about healing. So, here's a post about healing! :)

I have noticed that healing still comes most naturally to me. DPS and tanking are fun, and I seemed to pick them up fairly quickly (and for the most part hold my own, I'm not sure how good I actually am), but healing flows from these fingers onto my action bar and through my mouse-over macros (thanks Garaba). I one-handed healed a random heroic the other day because I was eating. It was H UP and I was only throwing up Renews and--wow, I don't even remember the name right now, it's #3 on my action bar, it's the jumpy-around-heal that goes to up to 5 people. Yeah, 3. Occasionally I'd use Circle but only because it was easier than putting my food down. My gearscore is pretty high now, so a lot of the older Northrend heroics are so easy to heal they're boring. Which is probably why I'm working on gearing my tank.

I was DPSing on my hunter in H VH not too long ago and the healer was a priest who never left Shadow spec. She Shadow-Healed the whole dungeon. Granted, health bars weren't topped off (like I like to do), but nobody died, even during boss fights. I'm apparently not the only one who's bored with the heroics. I guess this happens when an expansion is winding down. I started playing a month or two before Wrath came out, nowhere near the level cap when it hit, Wrath pretty much popped my cherry in a couple of ways.

Wrath is the first expansion that I got to move through with my guild, together. A lot of us were leveling at the same time, but some were farther than others (*cough*Darwe & Heap*cough*). We were all new 80's around the same time and experienced gearing up through heroics together, before Dungeon Finder. Our first guild raids were Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum. We were working on Ulduar when Kady got geared enough to help and became my main. We never did finish Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader came out before we could and that held our attention. Well, most of us. There are a couple of us (Garaba and I mostly) who want to go back and finish Ulduar to finish it, but that'll have to be a pug I suppose.

And now we're raiding Ice Crown Citadel--which is the first endgame content for a lot of us. We were fairly geared as a guild when we started it, and we have a rather large learning curve, but we work well as a team and inevitably get through one boss after the next. Currently, we've gotten as far as defeating Rotface. We would have raided yesterday and hopefully gotten just as far again, but Hubby and I went to the movies (can't say no to free tickets to an early screening of "Clash of the Titans"!). I'm sure if I logged on right now, I could probably get in with Darwe's guild, but I'd rather wait for Hubby to get home with Little Caesar's and do some random heroics with him on our alts :)

So yeah, getting bored with conflicting raid schedules makes me roll alts while we wait for the new content to drop. I know I'm not alone. How do you kill time waiting for the next expansion?